Removing Floor Tom Constant Rumbling

  • Thread starter Thread starter RecordingMaster
  • Start date Start date
RecordingMaster said:
You guys are funny! :laughings:

As for cotton balls, or 70's style dial-adjusted tone killers, I've discovered long ago that I don't like to use that stuff (maybe when I was 12 yrs old or so and even then I knew how terrible it was do do that). Sounds a la shit IMO. I even hate using moongels but make exceptions on my floor toms since they're 16 and 18. I actually don't even use a full moon gel. Can't stand the deadness. I use half pieces on fl toms and a quarter piece on my snare to allow 70% of the ring to remain.

Oh and as mentioned, my drums are on a carpet which is placed on top of a foam/rubber mat type of platform. The interlocking mats you'd find maybe in a gym or kids playroom or garage.


ANYWAYS...here's a sample as promised. Sounds terrible without room mics or overheads blended but just focus on the rumble. There's no compression or gating on this so you can hear the issue. If you listen to the part where I am playing 1/8 notes, that's the verse. More dynamic. Then there are the other fills in the rest of the song which are pretty much all harder hits. Makes we wonder ho to gate this thing.


View attachment 70225
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OK I missed that. Just making sure that you weren't on a hollow wooden drum riser.
 
And that is just the tom mic track?
I hear the main low tuned pitch- prominent when it's hit, and the sympathetic ring an octave above when you're not hitting it. (On Sony 7506 phones here
- w/o out context though it's tough to say- and/or see the problem.

Greg said on day one...
1) There's gotta be a way to trim the gate closing to be smoother

2) EQ out the hum, but that will effect the overall tone of the drum when it's hit, unless you automate the EQ to turn on and off

If it's the '300Hz ring that's the rumble bugging you –when it's not being hit?
I might be tempted to notch that out ahead of the gate (–likely a non fun tone anyway), and maybe that will also give you more latitude with the gate.

Even if the gate closure isn't exact there's still the blend from the O/H's..?
 
mixsit said:
And that is just the tom mic track?
I hear the main low tuned pitch- prominent when it's hit, and the sympathetic ring an octave above when you're not hitting it. (On Sony 7506 phones here
- w/o out context though it's tough to say- and/or see the problem.

Greg said on day one...
1) There's gotta be a way to trim the gate closing to be smoother

2) EQ out the hum, but that will effect the overall tone of the drum when it's hit, unless you automate the EQ to turn on and off

If it's the '300Hz ring that's the rumble bugging you –when it's not being hit?
I might be tempted to notch that out ahead of the gate (–likely a non fun tone anyway), and maybe that will also give you more latitude with the gate.

Even if the gate closure isn't exact there's still the blend from the O/H's..?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's that constant hum when not being hit. Although I'm not sure it's only at 300Hz. With the OH's blended (and all the other close mics for that matter) none of the other mic's pic up this hum. Just the floor tom mics. And those where the only mics that were clamped to the drum. Which leads me to believe it's sympathetic vibration through the shell/rim/clip/mic, and not the skin, especially since I don't even hear that in person.

So you're saying to add an eq before the gate (I'd normally have the gate as the first in the chain) and use it only to try and notch out the hum, THEN add gate, then compression (for dynamic control only), main eq and verb (what I would normally add)?
 
RecordingMaster said:
So you're saying to add an eq before the gate
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I would suggest using key filtering. You filter out the offending frequency from the signal going to the detector circuit so the gate doesn't open in response to what you're trying to get rid of. The output of the gate is not tonally altered. You can put eq downstream as you do now.
 
I just listened to your sound clip. That's what's bugging you? That sounds like a typical tom track. With full instrumentation you likely won't hear it unless you're doing something screwy in the mix. That's not things being transferred through the mic clip. That's typical sympathetic head ringing. If you can't control that with a simple gate then you don't know how to use one.
 
Greg_L said:
I just listened to your sound clip. That's what's bugging you? That sounds like a typical tom track. With full instrumentation you likely won't hear it unless you're doing something screwy in the mix. That's not things being transferred through the mic clip. That's typical sympathetic head ringing. If you can't control that with a simple gate then you don't know how to use one.
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+1 to all of that.

And I get the feeling that tuning won't help because the toms are responding to the impulse of the kick rather than the resonance.
 
That really was pretty tame compared to other tom tracks I've heard and even recorded myself. If anything, I'd worry more about the seemingly excessive bleed from the hats and snare instead of that extremely minor piddly ass head ringing.
 
Greg_L said:
I just listened to your sound clip. That's what's bugging you? That sounds like a typical tom track. With full instrumentation you likely won't hear it unless you're doing something screwy in the mix. That's not things being transferred through the mic clip. That's typical sympathetic head ringing. If you can't control that with a simple gate then you don't know how to use one.
Click to expand...
Man pretty much cuts to the chase there..
Really I was expecting some real low stuff, the base pitch perhaps.
 
Greg, I can control/eliminate that with the gate, however, I want the full sustain/tail of the floor tom to ring out and trail off naturally like in person. But the trail off is as loud as the constant hum, so it sort of never really rails off too much. When compression and gating come into play here, the gate opens up and and closes to abruptly. It's like the drum comes out of no where and then disappears (I like very audible toms in the mix but not this).

Supercreep, it sounds great as a whole but once I mix in the guitars and bass guitar, the kick drum gets this longer sustain then I'd prefer it too. The close mic on the kick is punchy as well as the kick drum sound through the overheads, but the kick drum resonance into the floor tom mics is muddying it up.

Mixsit, I'll try your suggestions as well. I think maybe this is just playing more with the gate and compressor settings. My chain is gat>comp>eq>verb. But I'm wondering if the compressor is compressing the tail end of the gate release too much, making it too abrupt. I've played with the settings like crazy and can't find a good medium for what I want to achieve. Maybe I should delete all the settings and start from scratch again...
 
RecordingMaster said:
Greg, I can control/eliminate that with the gate, however, I want the full sustain/tail of the floor tom to ring out and trail off naturally like in person. But the trail off is as loud as the constant hum, so it sort of never really rails off too much. When compression and gating come into play here, the gate opens up and and closes to abruptly. It's like the drum comes out of no where and then disappears (I like very audible toms in the mix but not this).
..
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Again, you're not using the compression or gate properly. Keep playing with it.
 
Have you tried gating the input of the drum as opposed to doing it when mixing?
 
It requires spending a bit of time to get the release dialed in, but there are usually no quick fixes to these problems. Once set up, you know what works and what doesn't. The same can be said about recording drums in general. So many more factors involved than guitar or bass.
 
I think this is all a moot point really. There's nothing really wrong with that floor tom track that a simple gate plug-in won't fix..
 
You really don't hit the tom that much in the song. It should take less than 10 minutes to edit that track.

The bigger problem is the bleed vs. tom level on that track.
 
Greg_L said:
Exactly. I agree. I mentioned that earlier. Better mic placement is in order here....or hit the damn drum harder! :D
Click to expand...
You could always try an upward expander to lower the bleed.

G
 
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